Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius. By Edward Spencer Beesly.
(Chapman and Hall.)—These essays attracted BOMB attention when they were published in the Fortnightly Review, and we are glad that the author has thought fit to give them a more permanent form. He hardly expects, we suppose, that they will bring round the world to his views, but he may fairly hope that they will do something to modify commonly current opinions. Professor Beesly is at the great disadvantage of being reduced to the single resource of cross-examining hostile witnesses. This is less true, perhaps, of Tiberius than of his two other clients, and it is with Tiberius accordingly that he seems to be most successful. Here he has something like a witness of his own in Velleins Paterculus, though we are not inclined to think much of the testimony of a friend of Sejanus. But Tacitus is certainly inconsistent, and even manifestly unfair. We cannot, however, admit the very rough-and-ready way in which Professor Beefily disposes of his evidence. The story of Postamus Agrippa, for instance, cannot be got rid of by the remark that "the mysterious visit to Planasia of a bed-ridden old man, without the knowledge of the wife who nursed him, we may safely pronounce a ridiculous fiction." Why "bed-ridden "? Augustus had accompanied Tiberius part of the way to the east coast of Italy, and was returning, when he was seized with his last illness. Plutarch, too, tells the story, with some curious details which do not look like invention. There is a strong probability that the fate of Fabius Maximus, the friend of the banished Ovid, and of the poet himself, was involved in some mysterious way with the banished Agrippa. " Caussam ego, Maximo, mortis (nee fuer= tanti) me reor ease teas," writes Ovid. (" Epist. ex Pont.," iv., 6, 11, 12.) But the subject is too long for discussion here. Anyhow, the curt sentence about the "bed-ridden old man" might do for a popular audience, but it will not satisfy the readers to whom Professor Beesly now appeals. In the case of Catiline, the advocate's task is more hopeless. Hero all the witnesses are against him, and their testimony is the stronger because they were not friends to each other. SalIust had no liking for Cicero, nor was he a partisan of the aristocracy ; yet Sallust's Catiline, though the genius of the man comes out more plainly, is substantially the same person as Cicero's. Livy, too, living in the time of the empire which inherited the cause of the democracy, and if Professor Beesly is to be believed, of Catiline, is very express in his testimony :—" L. Catilina, his repulsam in petitionis consu'atu passns, cum Lentulo prattore, et Cethego, et pluribus aliis, conjuravit de ca3de Consulnm et Sonatas, incendiis Urbis, et opprimenda Republica." We are quoting of course from the "Epitome," but the "Epitome" is supposed to be authoritative. It is no good, however, to quote books against Professor Beesly, so meanly does he think of literary men. We must protest against a twice repeated reference to an alleged avowal by Cicero of the policy of deliberately blackening an adversary's character. Whatever Cicero's practice may have been, his statement in De Oratore, ii., 59, about the mendaciuncula has nothing to do with such serious matters. The mendaciuncula are merely a genus facetiazunz.
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